Every single time someone uses the word "decimated" online, this comes up. Actually your definition is misleading to the point of being useless. "Decimated" didn't refer to the mere LOSS of ten percent of soldiers, as if toppled by enemy forces. It was unique form of punishment inflicted on mutinous legions which involved selecting 10% of their ranks by lot to be killed, and forcing the remaining 90% to execute the sentence. This punishment no longer exists, so the word has been repurposed to mean any large-scale ruthless culling. Why is it so objectionable for a word to change meaning over 2000 years?
DRM makes content that would otherwise be unavailable in a digital format available, only because some companies refuse to license their content unless it is protected by DRM.
Remember when cable companies were trial ballooning the idea that they would have to establish very low transfer caps, because it was the only possible way for them to make a profit? And for a while you kept hearing that justification for so long, "they can't make a profit otherwise," that even cap-protesters started to accept the underlying fact that some form of hard caps would probably be necessary. Even so, for some reason the idea didn't go over so well in the end and was shelved. Some time later a report came out which basically showed that the cable companies were making obscene levels of profits on all their internet operations, without the caps in place. So in other words, the background conventional wisdom was a total fabrication and unsubstantiated by any facts.
Remember all that?
Then remember how Plays4Sure and all those other services, including iTunes, used DRM because it was obvious that RIAA would forever refuse to license songs unencumbered? Remember that? Except it turned out to be a fabrication too, now iTunes songs are available without DRM, and others are moving in the same direction.
Basically. I don't believe the narrative that says DRM is a requirement. I think every single one of those companies, if given a choice between NO DRM and no digital sales at all, would eventually pick NO DRM. Sure, there would be holdouts at first, but they would eventually give in. "Lots of people cheat but we still make money," is a better business plan than, "Nobody cheats but nobody makes money."
DRM has been no benefit to consumers nor to content creators. The only people it really benefits are the DRM pushers who use greed and the lie of limitless profits to swindle industries.
Just because you are good at it doesn't mean that it's not a completely useless skill.
No, but if he himself has a use for it, which is says he does, then it's not completely useless by definition.
I suspect cursive will take longer to die out than some of you 26 year olds would like, and you'll need to occasionally read it if not write it for many years hence. People will still send letters to your company from time to time in cursive handwriting and you'll be forced to try to decipher them. It wouldn't surprise me if it makes a kind of mini-comeback like LPs, because hipsters will celebrate the intimacy and personality, the analogicity, of passing notes by longhand. One of the most useful aspects of cursive back in Ye Olde Days was the fact that it is extremely difficult to forge someone's cursive writing style. So you'd see a note scrawled in a file and immediately know the author was, even years later.
But eventually even the hipsters won't be able to keep it alive. Likely our grandchildren won't need to know how to write at all. As the number of applications dwindles where cursive or printed handwriting is necessary, at first text to speech will become the preferred mode of "reading" documents, and eventually we will forgo the written part entirely and resort to digitized speech for nearly all communications.
The reason most people don't "care about that sort of thing" is because writable Blu Ray discs are still an order of magnitude more expensive than DVDR. Even cheap BD-R is just as expensive as HDD per GB. So, most people will either stick to DVD or will simply back it up to a couple of HDDs for convenience. What's more, at large sizes, backup time becomes a huge issue -- 500 GB requires you to sit there and swap discs for at least 4 hours @ theoretical max 8x speed -- or you can plug in a hard drive, start the backup and come back in rw 5 hours for an external USB or somewhat faster for esata.
It seems to me that if Amazon can permanently delete an item from your Kindle, then there is no further argument that can be made against digital resales.
A Kindle user should have the ability to give away/resell the license to another user, thereupon permanently deleting their own access rights. Said transfer would work effectively the same way a paper book resale would work. What's more, their US customers should demand this first sale right that they've been illegally deprived of. Just as an ordinary bookseller does not have the legal right to prevent you from reselling a book, regardless of any contract they impose upon you, Amazon should not have this right. Especially since they have demonstrated through this gaffe that a transfer can be cleanly effectuated.
Your failure to link to your source implies that you're well aware it contains an alternate definition of "arbitrary" that proves you wrong: "Based on or subject to individual judgment or preference." So, in point of fact, when the previous poster was using "arbitrary" to mean based on Amazon's individual judgment, he was not using the word incorrectly. Yes, arbitrary can mean "random," but it can also mean something rather like "dictatorial" and it is in that sense that Amazon was being arbitrary.
The point of a "thousand year DVD" is not to archive something for literally one thousand years. Very few if any companies would have any possible business need for such a thing. The point is that if you have a 'large enough' number of DVDs with a 50 year MTTF, some of them will fail well within the time frame that they might be called into use, whereas a 1,000 year DVD is much less likely to have a catastrophic failure within its useful lifespan. Theoretically.
Nope. Jeopardy attaches as soon as they begin to pick the jury.
Not as soon as they begin to pick the jury, but as soon as they are done picking the jury. The entire jury must be empaneled, including alternates. Anyway, returning to my original point, there are exceptions to the rule, one of them being as stated here: "... if the dismissal was requested by the defendant and was for a reason that would prevent prosecution, the prosecutor may appeal. If the dismissal is reversed, the defendant may be prosecuted again."
Above and beyond that, double jeopardy does not necessarily apply to multiple prosecutions if there is more than one offense involved arising out of the same act. There's an interesting article about the quandary of double jeopardy here. It is far from an open and shut case.
No, it prevents you from (among other things) being charged twice for the same act:
No, it prevents you from being charged twice for the same offense. Read the rest of your own link. It specifically contradicts your statement above: "The Supreme Court held that punishment for two statutory offenses arising out of the same criminal act or transaction does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause if 'each provision requires proof of an additional fact which the other does not.'" Furthermore, double jeopardy has limited applicability in this instance because she was not acquitted after a trial by her peers, rather, the judge is throwing the case out notwithstanding the jury verdict, which makes the previous prosecution something of a nullity.
The article mentions that they "controlled" for physical activity. Does that mean that they compared like for like? Fat couch potatoes with skinny ones, fat joggers with skinny ones? I'm not a statistician but it seems on the face of it there's a problem: Being overweight generally causes you to become less physically active, so comparing normal joggers to heavy joggers is comparing someone of high-normal fitness to an obese person who's extraordinarily fit (for their weight range). The comparison may not be fair because that extraordinarily fit person could have good genes to begin with.
That aside, people who are skinny are sometimes skinny for health related reasons: cancer, AIDS, drugs. Here it's not the fact that they're skinny which is the issue but their low weight is a symptom of health problems. A more complex take on that would be a person who has lost weight because they were ordered to by their doctor. They're diabetic or have high blood pressure. So yes, they've lost weight and are healthier than before, but still less healthy than the slightly overweight person whose doctor didn't make them lose weight because they didn't have metabolic syndrome. Again, the low weight would not be a cause of illness, but an (indirect) effect.
Also, if it's true that you tend to gain weight every year you remain alive, then people who live a long time are more likely to be overweight. Not because they're heavy but because they're still alive. And people who die prematurely young are more likely to be skinny, not because they're malnourished, but because they simply didn't live long enough for a slow metabolism to pack on the pounds.
Regardless of his Lessig-credentials, the fact is that his point is poorly thought out, for at least three reasons.
1) Newspapers are voluntarily on the internet because they feel that an online presence is important to them. If, say, the New York Times doesn't like having aggregators leech off its content, it could easily shut down its website, end of story. Then its content would be available only in print. I wonder why the Times doesn't do that. Or, less sarcastically/rhetorically, if Posner has given thought as to why the Times doesn't do that. (And less extreme measures could be taken, such as making the site only available through the main page, making it subscription only, and so on. The issue is still the same, purely technological remedies can be taken, but in most cases they aren't, for the simple reason that no newspaper wants to be consigned to the dustbin of history, so to speak.)
2) How is this law supposed to affect those outside of the US? Is Posner's idea merely to cripple the US internet, or does he somehow think he can stop citizens in other nations from linking to US sites? Or maybe that's OK in his estimation, since US papers don't derive substantial revenue from foreign readers. In which case, we'll have a curious sort of situation where US web users will be linking to foreign papers to discuss them and vice-versa. Either way, this won't stop people from going to the internet for news, it will just slow things down a bit
3) One of the largest reasons newspapers are losing revenue is because they've lost the classified ad wars with Craigslist. That situation won't change by shutting down Google.
4) As long as we're throwing out absurd ideas willy-nilly, how about this? Make the sales of offline print advertising tax-free. That will have the effect of subsidizing the struggling newspaper industry without the government directly involving itself in the fourth estate.
And I'd also go ahead and point out that there was a time when web browsers were sold seperate from the OS. At that point there was competition to IE - Netscape.
Modern OSes require connectivity. When Windows 3.1 was out it was still common for people to connect with FTP, which came free with Windows, or with a terminal program, which came free with Windows, or through online service gateways (e.g. AOL), which usually came bundled with Windows. (Note that the fact that there was a free ftp or telnet or hyperterm didn't stop programs like CuteFTP and HyperACCESS from existing and making money.) At this point Web browsers weren't yet integrated into "the OS," meaning Windows or any other Operating System, because they weren't yet a popular means of connectivity. But when they started to become popular, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, NeXT, Linux makers ALL started to bundle Web browsers. Microsoft wasn't doing anything unusual here, and they shouldn't be penalized for it. In fact, the first IE wasn't actually free -- it came with MS Plus! which was an additional purchase. And it had to compete with Netscape, which despite its nominal fee was effectively free for home users, who could keep updating the endless beta.
Did they abuse their monopoly in (many) other ways? Yes. Arguably the fact that they chose to make IE broadly incompatible with established web standards did negatively impact competing browsers, since Microsoft's dominant position caused the World Wide Web to evolve as an IE compatible beast. (Note that this is a separate issue from the mere existence of a Windows branded broswer.) But at this point they've already been fined hundreds of millions of euros, the horse has long left the barn, and the browser is no longer an optional part of a decent operating system. Let's just let the best browser win.
Besides, Internet Explorer is an indispensable tool for one thing -- downloading Firefox onto a virgin Windows install.
He has an obligation to the shareholders to not be "patriotic", but instead to maximise the value of the company. He could be sued in to the ground if he didn't.
I'm starting to wonder if the people who keep modding up that ridiculous Slashdot meme are trolling for laughs. The only way you could believe that statement is true if you've never ever read an annual report or a stock offering or paid even cursory attention to how companies operate in real life. Corporate heads are not required to "maximize value," they're required to not be wasteful and to act in the best interests of the corporation, along with some other standards which can be referenced on wikipedia, for one. Within those extremely lax perameters, corporate directors are presumed to be doing their jobs to legal and ethical standards unless there is some sort of gross fraud or incompetence. Also, note that "in the best interests of the corporation" is not necessarily synonymous with "maximize short term profits." In this particular case, if MS were to offshore its operations to save taxes, and consequently it was shut out of billions in government contracts, that might not be in the best interests of the corporation.
Ballmer is blustering and his bluff should be called.
Why did it take the police 11 hours to decide to pay the $20 dollar bill?
Because that's not what the article said. It said they were searching for him for 11 hours. Sometime during that period, someone apparently got the idea to use his cell phone. There's no implication that there was an extraordinarily long time period between the time they contacted Verizon and the time they decided to come up with the $20.
Additionally:
Where was this customer service rep? Augusta? Florida? India? Were they legally under the jurisdiction of this sheriff? How were they (as a customer service rep) supposed to verify that the person was a sheriff acting legally and within the scope of his duties? Imagine some jerk happens to be a sheriff in a little podunk town, population 500. He's also the town executive and his brother's the town judge and can issue a local warrant if need be. So according to slashdot this guy should be able to order Verizon around whenever he wants. Do you want your phone company rolling over and complying with his every request, no warrant, no nothing? My feeling is there isn't nearly enough information in this article to reach a conclusion about the appropriateness of VZ's (in)actions.
Except that it is productive to examine this entitlement attitude in detail. Because people don't generally think they're entitled to free cars and free Wiimotes. What's the difference between those things and what Sony offers? For one, if I could duplicate a car for free, you'd damn well believe that I'd never pony up $20K for the same item. But I can't -- the only way for me to get hold of a car without depriving someone else is to buy one. A car, even if its blueprints and schematics were open source IP, is constructed out of bits and pieces that cost money, and cost even more money to put together. Sony's problem is that its IP is comprised mostly of bits that are free, literally and figuratively, and shipping and storage are near zero cost. And for that, they could just as well blame Seagate instead of Earthlink.
Poor innocent RIAA-tan will never catch all the piracy scofflaws using this time-consuming serial approach. Hasn't she ever heard of multi-level marketing? Or the classic wheat and chessboard problem? It's simple.
They need to sue the bejeesus out of someone, and offer to settle by forcing the person to buy the rights to a minor song, and then requiring that that person protect their rights by suing two other people. And those two other people will have to settle by each suing two other people, and so on, and so on.
Eventually everyone will wind up being sued, but at least having nice smelling hair.
Debian may do this with Iceweasel, but Debian doesn't do this with Debian. Parens implicitly acknowledges that on some level, you need a way to establish and verify trust. Debian says, "We'll do the verification for you. If you trust us, you can trust the untrademarked software we use." In essence, Mozilla(TM) Firefox(TM) becomes "Debian(TM) Iceweasel."
"Especially students! Google - search for websites. Wolfram - search for answers."
That's oversimplifying things. Google can be much more useful than a mere search for websites if you know how to structure your query. Wolfram has a while to go before it can even compete with the rudimentary:
Because outside of the damage they inflict upon naive individuals and their families, if left unchecked (as we basically saw with the housing bubble) they have the potential to inflict damage upon the real economy.
Because a large percentage of people are not smart with money but are otherwise extremely capable of being productive contributors to society. As a society it benefits us for people to be justly rewarded for their fruitful labor, which requires mitigating the potential harm of their money-foolish character flaw.
And finally, to the extent that money becomes a hack as opposed to an accurate representation of labor and capital, it is devalued as a concept, which decreases its global worth and utility.
as I suggested why don't you just create an online book store that competes with Amazon
If it's such a awesomely profitable idea, why don't you do it yourself? Maybe you're already a busy person with a comfortable income? Maybe you're not interested in becoming a bookseller? And not to be overlooked: What happens if/when Amazon changes its mind two months later because a bunch of people disregarded your advice by boycotting, making noise, and shaming Amazon into reconsideration? Likely your little storefront and whatever time, energy and money you devoted to it would be instantly crushed.
Overall, this philosophy you're trying to convince everyone of, that the best response to an enterprise you disagree with is to directly compete with it, is, bluntly put, silly. If you don't like your Senator because she's too religious, you can't just vote against her, you have to run against her? If you don't like the latest blockbuster film because it's got bad science, you can't just be a critic, or warn your friends off, you have to produce and distribute your own film? If you don't like the music that's out there, boycotting the major labels is no good, you have to start your own band? Sure, some people will have the time, the ambition and the talent to make these kinds of responses worthwhile, and perhaps the world would be better if more of us had the courage to do so (although perhaps not...,) but for the vast majority of people it's simply unworkable for one reason or another.
Slashdot Mirror
Every single time someone uses the word "decimated" online, this comes up. Actually your definition is misleading to the point of being useless. "Decimated" didn't refer to the mere LOSS of ten percent of soldiers, as if toppled by enemy forces. It was unique form of punishment inflicted on mutinous legions which involved selecting 10% of their ranks by lot to be killed, and forcing the remaining 90% to execute the sentence. This punishment no longer exists, so the word has been repurposed to mean any large-scale ruthless culling. Why is it so objectionable for a word to change meaning over 2000 years?
Remember when cable companies were trial ballooning the idea that they would have to establish very low transfer caps, because it was the only possible way for them to make a profit? And for a while you kept hearing that justification for so long, "they can't make a profit otherwise," that even cap-protesters started to accept the underlying fact that some form of hard caps would probably be necessary. Even so, for some reason the idea didn't go over so well in the end and was shelved. Some time later a report came out which basically showed that the cable companies were making obscene levels of profits on all their internet operations, without the caps in place. So in other words, the background conventional wisdom was a total fabrication and unsubstantiated by any facts.
Remember all that?
Then remember how Plays4Sure and all those other services, including iTunes, used DRM because it was obvious that RIAA would forever refuse to license songs unencumbered? Remember that? Except it turned out to be a fabrication too, now iTunes songs are available without DRM, and others are moving in the same direction.
Basically. I don't believe the narrative that says DRM is a requirement. I think every single one of those companies, if given a choice between NO DRM and no digital sales at all, would eventually pick NO DRM. Sure, there would be holdouts at first, but they would eventually give in. "Lots of people cheat but we still make money," is a better business plan than, "Nobody cheats but nobody makes money."
DRM has been no benefit to consumers nor to content creators. The only people it really benefits are the DRM pushers who use greed and the lie of limitless profits to swindle industries.
No, but if he himself has a use for it, which is says he does, then it's not completely useless by definition.
I suspect cursive will take longer to die out than some of you 26 year olds would like, and you'll need to occasionally read it if not write it for many years hence. People will still send letters to your company from time to time in cursive handwriting and you'll be forced to try to decipher them. It wouldn't surprise me if it makes a kind of mini-comeback like LPs, because hipsters will celebrate the intimacy and personality, the analogicity, of passing notes by longhand. One of the most useful aspects of cursive back in Ye Olde Days was the fact that it is extremely difficult to forge someone's cursive writing style. So you'd see a note scrawled in a file and immediately know the author was, even years later.
But eventually even the hipsters won't be able to keep it alive. Likely our grandchildren won't need to know how to write at all. As the number of applications dwindles where cursive or printed handwriting is necessary, at first text to speech will become the preferred mode of "reading" documents, and eventually we will forgo the written part entirely and resort to digitized speech for nearly all communications.
The reason most people don't "care about that sort of thing" is because writable Blu Ray discs are still an order of magnitude more expensive than DVDR. Even cheap BD-R is just as expensive as HDD per GB. So, most people will either stick to DVD or will simply back it up to a couple of HDDs for convenience. What's more, at large sizes, backup time becomes a huge issue -- 500 GB requires you to sit there and swap discs for at least 4 hours @ theoretical max 8x speed -- or you can plug in a hard drive, start the backup and come back in rw 5 hours for an external USB or somewhat faster for esata.
It seems to me that if Amazon can permanently delete an item from your Kindle, then there is no further argument that can be made against digital resales.
A Kindle user should have the ability to give away/resell the license to another user, thereupon permanently deleting their own access rights. Said transfer would work effectively the same way a paper book resale would work. What's more, their US customers should demand this first sale right that they've been illegally deprived of. Just as an ordinary bookseller does not have the legal right to prevent you from reselling a book, regardless of any contract they impose upon you, Amazon should not have this right. Especially since they have demonstrated through this gaffe that a transfer can be cleanly effectuated.
Your failure to link to your source implies that you're well aware it contains an alternate definition of "arbitrary" that proves you wrong: "Based on or subject to individual judgment or preference." So, in point of fact, when the previous poster was using "arbitrary" to mean based on Amazon's individual judgment, he was not using the word incorrectly. Yes, arbitrary can mean "random," but it can also mean something rather like "dictatorial" and it is in that sense that Amazon was being arbitrary.
The point of a "thousand year DVD" is not to archive something for literally one thousand years. Very few if any companies would have any possible business need for such a thing. The point is that if you have a 'large enough' number of DVDs with a 50 year MTTF, some of them will fail well within the time frame that they might be called into use, whereas a 1,000 year DVD is much less likely to have a catastrophic failure within its useful lifespan. Theoretically.
I initially scanned that as:
MS still fits the bill (e.g. Bing the most popular platform,
and was like...huh, since when???
Nope. Jeopardy attaches as soon as they begin to pick the jury.
Not as soon as they begin to pick the jury, but as soon as they are done picking the jury. The entire jury must be empaneled, including alternates. Anyway, returning to my original point, there are exceptions to the rule, one of them being as stated here: "... if the dismissal was requested by the defendant and was for a reason that would prevent prosecution, the prosecutor may appeal. If the dismissal is reversed, the defendant may be prosecuted again."
Above and beyond that, double jeopardy does not necessarily apply to multiple prosecutions if there is more than one offense involved arising out of the same act. There's an interesting article about the quandary of double jeopardy here. It is far from an open and shut case.
No, it prevents you from (among other things) being charged twice for the same act:
No, it prevents you from being charged twice for the same offense. Read the rest of your own link. It specifically contradicts your statement above: "The Supreme Court held that punishment for two statutory offenses arising out of the same criminal act or transaction does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause if 'each provision requires proof of an additional fact which the other does not.'" Furthermore, double jeopardy has limited applicability in this instance because she was not acquitted after a trial by her peers, rather, the judge is throwing the case out notwithstanding the jury verdict, which makes the previous prosecution something of a nullity.
The article mentions that they "controlled" for physical activity. Does that mean that they compared like for like? Fat couch potatoes with skinny ones, fat joggers with skinny ones? I'm not a statistician but it seems on the face of it there's a problem: Being overweight generally causes you to become less physically active, so comparing normal joggers to heavy joggers is comparing someone of high-normal fitness to an obese person who's extraordinarily fit (for their weight range). The comparison may not be fair because that extraordinarily fit person could have good genes to begin with.
That aside, people who are skinny are sometimes skinny for health related reasons: cancer, AIDS, drugs. Here it's not the fact that they're skinny which is the issue but their low weight is a symptom of health problems. A more complex take on that would be a person who has lost weight because they were ordered to by their doctor. They're diabetic or have high blood pressure. So yes, they've lost weight and are healthier than before, but still less healthy than the slightly overweight person whose doctor didn't make them lose weight because they didn't have metabolic syndrome. Again, the low weight would not be a cause of illness, but an (indirect) effect.
Also, if it's true that you tend to gain weight every year you remain alive, then people who live a long time are more likely to be overweight. Not because they're heavy but because they're still alive. And people who die prematurely young are more likely to be skinny, not because they're malnourished, but because they simply didn't live long enough for a slow metabolism to pack on the pounds.
Regardless of his Lessig-credentials, the fact is that his point is poorly thought out, for at least three reasons.
1) Newspapers are voluntarily on the internet because they feel that an online presence is important to them. If, say, the New York Times doesn't like having aggregators leech off its content, it could easily shut down its website, end of story. Then its content would be available only in print. I wonder why the Times doesn't do that. Or, less sarcastically/rhetorically, if Posner has given thought as to why the Times doesn't do that. (And less extreme measures could be taken, such as making the site only available through the main page, making it subscription only, and so on. The issue is still the same, purely technological remedies can be taken, but in most cases they aren't, for the simple reason that no newspaper wants to be consigned to the dustbin of history, so to speak.)
2) How is this law supposed to affect those outside of the US? Is Posner's idea merely to cripple the US internet, or does he somehow think he can stop citizens in other nations from linking to US sites? Or maybe that's OK in his estimation, since US papers don't derive substantial revenue from foreign readers. In which case, we'll have a curious sort of situation where US web users will be linking to foreign papers to discuss them and vice-versa. Either way, this won't stop people from going to the internet for news, it will just slow things down a bit
3) One of the largest reasons newspapers are losing revenue is because they've lost the classified ad wars with Craigslist. That situation won't change by shutting down Google.
4) As long as we're throwing out absurd ideas willy-nilly, how about this? Make the sales of offline print advertising tax-free. That will have the effect of subsidizing the struggling newspaper industry without the government directly involving itself in the fourth estate.
Beta 99
And I'd also go ahead and point out that there was a time when web browsers were sold seperate from the OS. At that point there was competition to IE - Netscape.
Modern OSes require connectivity. When Windows 3.1 was out it was still common for people to connect with FTP, which came free with Windows, or with a terminal program, which came free with Windows, or through online service gateways (e.g. AOL), which usually came bundled with Windows. (Note that the fact that there was a free ftp or telnet or hyperterm didn't stop programs like CuteFTP and HyperACCESS from existing and making money.) At this point Web browsers weren't yet integrated into "the OS," meaning Windows or any other Operating System, because they weren't yet a popular means of connectivity. But when they started to become popular, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, NeXT, Linux makers ALL started to bundle Web browsers. Microsoft wasn't doing anything unusual here, and they shouldn't be penalized for it. In fact, the first IE wasn't actually free -- it came with MS Plus! which was an additional purchase. And it had to compete with Netscape, which despite its nominal fee was effectively free for home users, who could keep updating the endless beta.
Did they abuse their monopoly in (many) other ways? Yes. Arguably the fact that they chose to make IE broadly incompatible with established web standards did negatively impact competing browsers, since Microsoft's dominant position caused the World Wide Web to evolve as an IE compatible beast. (Note that this is a separate issue from the mere existence of a Windows branded broswer.) But at this point they've already been fined hundreds of millions of euros, the horse has long left the barn, and the browser is no longer an optional part of a decent operating system. Let's just let the best browser win.
Besides, Internet Explorer is an indispensable tool for one thing -- downloading Firefox onto a virgin Windows install.
He has an obligation to the shareholders to not be "patriotic", but instead to maximise the value of the company. He could be sued in to the ground if he didn't.
I'm starting to wonder if the people who keep modding up that ridiculous Slashdot meme are trolling for laughs. The only way you could believe that statement is true if you've never ever read an annual report or a stock offering or paid even cursory attention to how companies operate in real life. Corporate heads are not required to "maximize value," they're required to not be wasteful and to act in the best interests of the corporation, along with some other standards which can be referenced on wikipedia, for one. Within those extremely lax perameters, corporate directors are presumed to be doing their jobs to legal and ethical standards unless there is some sort of gross fraud or incompetence. Also, note that "in the best interests of the corporation" is not necessarily synonymous with "maximize short term profits." In this particular case, if MS were to offshore its operations to save taxes, and consequently it was shut out of billions in government contracts, that might not be in the best interests of the corporation.
Ballmer is blustering and his bluff should be called.
Why did it take the police 11 hours to decide to pay the $20 dollar bill?
Because that's not what the article said. It said they were searching for him for 11 hours. Sometime during that period, someone apparently got the idea to use his cell phone. There's no implication that there was an extraordinarily long time period between the time they contacted Verizon and the time they decided to come up with the $20.
Additionally:
Where was this customer service rep? Augusta? Florida? India? Were they legally under the jurisdiction of this sheriff? How were they (as a customer service rep) supposed to verify that the person was a sheriff acting legally and within the scope of his duties? Imagine some jerk happens to be a sheriff in a little podunk town, population 500. He's also the town executive and his brother's the town judge and can issue a local warrant if need be. So according to slashdot this guy should be able to order Verizon around whenever he wants. Do you want your phone company rolling over and complying with his every request, no warrant, no nothing? My feeling is there isn't nearly enough information in this article to reach a conclusion about the appropriateness of VZ's (in)actions.
Doesn't matter how much fixin' they do, the Hubble would suck at getting this shot. ;)
Except that it is productive to examine this entitlement attitude in detail. Because people don't generally think they're entitled to free cars and free Wiimotes. What's the difference between those things and what Sony offers? For one, if I could duplicate a car for free, you'd damn well believe that I'd never pony up $20K for the same item. But I can't -- the only way for me to get hold of a car without depriving someone else is to buy one. A car, even if its blueprints and schematics were open source IP, is constructed out of bits and pieces that cost money, and cost even more money to put together. Sony's problem is that its IP is comprised mostly of bits that are free, literally and figuratively, and shipping and storage are near zero cost. And for that, they could just as well blame Seagate instead of Earthlink.
Poor innocent RIAA-tan will never catch all the piracy scofflaws using this time-consuming serial approach. Hasn't she ever heard of multi-level marketing? Or the classic wheat and chessboard problem? It's simple.
They need to sue the bejeesus out of someone, and offer to settle by forcing the person to buy the rights to a minor song, and then requiring that that person protect their rights by suing two other people. And those two other people will have to settle by each suing two other people, and so on, and so on.
Eventually everyone will wind up being sued, but at least having nice smelling hair.
Debian may do this with Iceweasel, but Debian doesn't do this with Debian. Parens implicitly acknowledges that on some level, you need a way to establish and verify trust. Debian says, "We'll do the verification for you. If you trust us, you can trust the untrademarked software we use." In essence, Mozilla(TM) Firefox(TM) becomes "Debian(TM) Iceweasel."
It's called Neem oil, and the Indian military
Neem is indigenous to India and fairly widespread.
Indian population: 1,147,995,904.
The efficacy seems suspect.
Also, Neem oil consumption carries certain risks, such as liver damage.
"Especially students! Google - search for websites. Wolfram - search for answers."
That's oversimplifying things. Google can be much more useful than a mere search for websites if you know how to structure your query. Wolfram has a while to go before it can even compete with the rudimentary:
google: "query wiki"
Because outside of the damage they inflict upon naive individuals and their families, if left unchecked (as we basically saw with the housing bubble) they have the potential to inflict damage upon the real economy.
Because a large percentage of people are not smart with money but are otherwise extremely capable of being productive contributors to society. As a society it benefits us for people to be justly rewarded for their fruitful labor, which requires mitigating the potential harm of their money-foolish character flaw.
And finally, to the extent that money becomes a hack as opposed to an accurate representation of labor and capital, it is devalued as a concept, which decreases its global worth and utility.
as I suggested why don't you just create an online book store that competes with Amazon
If it's such a awesomely profitable idea, why don't you do it yourself? Maybe you're already a busy person with a comfortable income? Maybe you're not interested in becoming a bookseller? And not to be overlooked: What happens if/when Amazon changes its mind two months later because a bunch of people disregarded your advice by boycotting, making noise, and shaming Amazon into reconsideration? Likely your little storefront and whatever time, energy and money you devoted to it would be instantly crushed.
Overall, this philosophy you're trying to convince everyone of, that the best response to an enterprise you disagree with is to directly compete with it, is, bluntly put, silly. If you don't like your Senator because she's too religious, you can't just vote against her, you have to run against her? If you don't like the latest blockbuster film because it's got bad science, you can't just be a critic, or warn your friends off, you have to produce and distribute your own film? If you don't like the music that's out there, boycotting the major labels is no good, you have to start your own band? Sure, some people will have the time, the ambition and the talent to make these kinds of responses worthwhile, and perhaps the world would be better if more of us had the courage to do so (although perhaps not...,) but for the vast majority of people it's simply unworkable for one reason or another.
When you have to campaign to get your way, as do the California Mormons, that's not tyranny, it's persuasion. It's the exact opposite of tyranny.